Abstract

In recent years, universities have been involved in developing new strategies to promote widening participation in higher education, and consequently they have been focusing on increasing the variety of support offered to students with disabilities for a more inclusive and widely accessible learning environment. However, there is a common feeling amongst practitioners and learners that learning disabilities are harder to recognise than physical disabilities, and therefore less prioritised. Such is still the case with dyslexia, a learning difference (term chosen here by the authors to describe a difficulty in the cognitive processing of information), which unlike most physical disabilities, is not always identified and therefore addressed with appropriate dyslexia-friendly learning materials and approaches. Furthermore, the staggering growth in the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in education raises questions about how the new technologies can support an inclusive learning approach. This case study provides an outline of the Dyslexia in Modern Language Learning (DMLL) collaborative project, aimed at bridging the gap between language learning and learning differences (specifically dyslexia) in an online distance learning framework.